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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28849524">Guilty Pranks</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/kvaerx/pseuds/kvaerx'>kvaerx</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Kaaras Adaar Worldstate Snippets [3]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Gen, Guilt, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, Pranks, no beta we die like men</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-01-19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 08:33:27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,062</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28849524</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/kvaerx/pseuds/kvaerx</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Sera gets Kaaras to help her prank Cullen</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Kaaras Adaar Worldstate Snippets [3]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/2064879</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Guilty Pranks</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>As Kaaras passed by the door, he heard a strange scraping noise from inside Cullen’s office. Curious, he stopped at the door and leaned closer to listen. The scraping noise had stopped, and he could hear muttered curses from inside. The voice was strangely female instead of the male voice of Cullen that he was expecting. But it was familiar. Sera, he thought. He pushed the door open and stepped inside.<br/>
Sera was leaning against Cullen’s desk, trying to push it across the floor. She looked up as he entered. “Shit! It wasn’t me.” She ran towards him, presumably to slip out the door, but Kaaras blocked the doorway.<br/>
“What are you doing in here?” Kaaras asked. He glanced quickly inside to see if anything was noticeably different. It didn’t seem so. She hadn’t put anything into the room, or at least anything large enough that would be easily seen. In the same manner, nothing was obviously missing. He couldn’t say for certain what had changed, but something felt off.<br/>
“Nothing,” she said. Then she gave him an evil grin. “Not yet.”<br/>
“Not yet,” Kaaras repeated. He sighed. “Do you still plan to go through with it? Whatever it happens to be in this case?”<br/>
Sera looked him over. From the tips of his horns to the bottom of his feet with one sweep of her gaze. At length, she said, “You’re big.”<br/>
There didn’t seem to be any good way to respond to that, so Kaaras kept quiet and waited to see if she would elaborate.<br/>
Several more moments passed. He almost felt ridiculous for how they were still standing. She was tense, like some wild creature ready to escape if given the chance, and he was filling the doorway to keep her from running. He felt as though he was intimidating her, towering over her and trapping her in the room. He did not like it. He’d been born Vashoth, inhumanly tall and broad with curving horns. When he walked among humans he would slump and try to seem less imposing. He imagined that it would be worse for an elf like Sera. That even hunched and peaceful he would seem like a monster.<br/>
Sera grinned again, drawing Kaaras from his thoughts. “Help me shift the desk?”<br/>
Kaaras narrowed his eyes at her. “Why?”<br/>
“I already moved it and you can help me put it back?” It was more a question than a statement. An excuse she was asking him to accept. It almost made sense. He had heard scraping before, and she’d been shoving at the desk. It might have been true. But she had asked it, not said it.<br/>
“I don’t believe that,” Kaaras said.<br/>
Sera shrugged and stepped back towards the table. In the doorway, Kaaras relaxed somewhat and took a step into the room.<br/>
“Well, will you move it for me?”<br/>
Kaaras walked further into the room, coming to a stop just at the desk. “What will you do if I don’t?”<br/>
Sera positively cackled. “Bees.”<br/>
“Where would you put them?” he asked. “Cullen would notice a beehive on his desk or stuck to the wall.”<br/>
She laughed again, hardly stopping to speak so that her words were barely intelligible. “I’ll find someplace else to put them.”<br/>
Kaaras raised a hand to his face to cover his smile. He tried to make it look as though he was disappointed in her but wasn’t sure that he was succeeding in that. “Alright then, I will help you move the desk.” He mastered his expression and lowered his hand from his face so he could raise a single finger in warning. “But only so that the Commander of the Inquisition’s forces isn’t scared away from his post by half a hundred bee stings.”<br/>
Sera motioned him forward. “Blah, blah. Just move the desk.”<br/>
Kaaras gave it a shove. It scraped across the floor two inches to the left of where it had been originally. He took a step forward to brace himself and shove again, but Sera motioned for him to stop.<br/>
“Chair next.”<br/>
Kaaras was curious what the purpose of such a small movement of the desk was. He knew though that if he asked, he’d receive a random scattering of words that really were no explanation at all. Instead he just shoved the chair to match the desk. It was much easier to move at least.<br/>
“The torches too?” he asked.<br/>
Sera looked at them, glowing in their tall holders against the wall. “It’d only be more irritating to set them right.”<br/>
“I thought…” Kaaras started. But he didn’t continue the question about everything she did having the sole point of irritating people. Like before, the answer that would result from that would be unintelligible to everyone who wasn’t Sera.<br/>
“Stand about if you want to,” Sera said. “But I’m leaving.”<br/>
She darted out of the room before Kaaras could react.<br/>
He stood there, confused about what he had just done and her quick escape. He wondered if she’d always been so fast, if she would have been able to slip past him through the doorway earlier. It made him feel marginally better about being so looming.<br/>
Footsteps in the corridor distracted him from his thoughts.<br/>
Kaaras straightened up, trying to look like he had a purpose while he stood in Cullen’s empty office. His heart leapt into his throat and the blood pounded in his head.<br/>
Cullen came through the doorway. His shoulders were slumped.<br/>
“Inquisitor,” he said, straightening and trying to quickly smooth his hair and clothing. “I’m sorry to have kept you waiting. Did you need something?”<br/>
Kaaras stood there not knowing what to say. He wondered if he should make up a fake reason for being in Cullen’s office, or perhaps to explain what he’d done at Sera’s urging. That would implicate him though, at he felt a sudden guilt at being involved at all. The air inside the office seemed warm and too thick to think straight.<br/>
“I’ve forgotten the reason,” he managed. “Very sorry.” He pushed past Cullen and left the room.<br/>
Once outside, Kaaras leaned against the wall and waited for his heart to slow down.<br/>
Quietly, from the office, he could hear Cullen speaking to himself.<br/>
“Something is wrong. I know Sera was in here, and when I find out what she’s done, I will… Do something back.”</p>
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